From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: john@jfloren.net (John Floren) Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2011 08:41:05 -0700 Subject: [9fans] troff macros for typesetting books/longer texts In-Reply-To: References: <201103251150.p2PBoXHo006823@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: Topicbox-Message-UUID: c0c0e0c8-ead6-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 Evidence: http://jfloren.net/its-info.png That's a screenshot of Info running on an ITS system :) John On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 8:32 AM, John Floren wrote: > Well, I think it's more that Richard Stallman was so ridiculously in > love with ITS's documentation system (which was pretty good for its > time, I admit) that he decided to clone it for Unix. > > Could the bloat of GNU tools merely be a ploy by rms to force people > into using info? :) > > > John > > On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 8:10 AM, pmarin wrote: >> My theory is that GNU tools were so bloated by design that they >> realized that they ?couldn't write a decent man page for their tools >> so they invented the ?info pages and the --help flag. >> >> On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 1:25 PM, erik quanstrom wrote: >>> On Fri Mar 25 07:52:10 EDT 2011, arnold at skeeve.com wrote: >>>> I really like the GNU project's Texinfo markup language, which >>>> sets on top of TeX, but you don't have to know TeX. (I've been using >>>> Texinfo for > 20 years, but don't know any TeX.) >>>> >>>> I've written books in troff, Docbook/XML, and Texinfo, and Texinfo is >>>> by far the easiest. >>> >>> i never could get past the fact that texbook reeks of hubris >>> and nih, nor forgive gnu for using info as an excuse for not >>> having man pages. ?that, and the fact that it's at least 100x >>> slower than troff, and the reader requires cursor addressing. >>> >>> - erik >>> >>> >> >> >